


Points of View

by VentasServitas



Series: And the Story Goes On [2]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25688683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VentasServitas/pseuds/VentasServitas
Summary: Dear Reader,I have made it my life's mission to research and document the lives of the Baudelaire orphans. Although the following writings do not concern the children directly, it is my opinion that they form a vital part of their story. The story of the Quagmire triplets enclosed within this file are not my own work, but I have verified its veracity, and I believe that those interested in the Baudelaires will find it well worth their time.With all due respect,Lemony Snicket (and anonymous author)
Relationships: Klaus Baudelaire/Isadora Quagmire, Violet Baudelaire/Quigley Quagmire
Series: And the Story Goes On [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1852960
Kudos: 18





	1. Distant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quigley makes an important decision.

It was a strange feeling, sitting and watching the world go by. The people below were so close, and yet so far, thought Quigley, as he watched towns and villages pass through his spyglass. He sighed and turned away, putting his spyglass securely in one of his coat pockets. It wasn’t like it made a difference what happened below, the self-sustaining mobile air home could do many things, but returning safely to the ground was not one of them.

It was a strange feeling, Quigley thought, to be safe again after so long. Nothing could reach them up here, nothing could hurt them. A month ago he would have given almost anything to be here, away from fire starters and deadly fungi and ancient conspiracies. Now he had achieved everything he had set out to do: the sugar bowl was safe with the firefighters, and he was safe with his family. Then why did he feel so empty?

When they had been younger, the Quagmires had been inseparable, where you found one, the others were sure to be nearby. Adults had rarely referred to them except collectively, as if they were a single, three part being. But now there was distance. Quigley had spent the past few months trying to reunite with his siblings, he had not given any thought to after.

They were different now, all three of them. Isadora was quieter, less confident. She had always been the boldest of them, the planner, the leader. Now that role fell to Quigley, not that there was much leading to be done on airship far from anything else. Duncan had changed too, his features were sharper, his expression guarded. Quigley had had quite a shock on reuniting with his siblings, he had not eaten well in his weeks on the run, but Duncan and Isadora had quite plainly been starved, their weeks with Hector not quite enough to recover. When Quigley had learnt their full story, he had cursed. He cursed Olaf for what he had done, he cursed the VFD for telling him that they had been fine, and he cursed himself for not being there. 

Quigley knew that he had probably changed the most. He had worn a mask for so long, he wasn’t sure what was left beneath his projected surety and confidence. Something stopped him from acting like himself again, even amongst the people he loved most in the world. He wasn’t sure he knew how.

Duncan and Isadora sat close now, Quigley noticed, closer than normal people did. They were rarely more than a meter apart these days. They had tried to do the same with him, never leaving his side, until he began to find it exhausting, keeping up his aura of confidence, of infallibility. He often found himself seeking solitude on the observation platform. He spent a lot of time there now, watching the world go by. He wondered sometimes if it had permanently changed him, those months alone. He wondered if it had changed them, thinking he was dead. 

He thought back to when he had first climbed the ladder into the central basket, the conversation he’d had with Hector. The world was full of pain and suffering, so they had left it behind. The world was quiet here, but at what cost? He realised then why he had been avoiding his siblings. He was afraid.

He was afraid that they were no longer the people he had grown up with, faced life with. He was afraid of rejection, so he chose not to try. He chose to sit outside, to watch but not to act not to participate. He was physically closer now to Duncan and Isadora than he had been since the fire, but he felt further away than ever. He had survived all the challenges the world had thrown at him, and he didn’t want to be hurt anymore. But it wasn’t living, sitting outside and watching, not really. Perhaps he couldn't return to the world below, perhaps he didn’t even want to; but he could do this, he needed to do this. Quigley took a deep breath, took one more look around him, and went inside to join his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm giving a new writing style a go. I've tried to emulate Handler's Lemony Snicket voice in the Improbable Interlude, but I won't be for this one. Each chapter will have a single viewpoint character, and I'll cycle through the Quagmire triplets. Each chapter will progress from the last, although there will be gaps, this is not a continuous story.


	2. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isadora comes to an important realisation

Isadora sat on the library floor, opposite what had once been her favourite chair, and regretted returning here. She had loved it once, her home, spent countless hours exploring, and playing hide and seek within its walls. Only one wall remained standing, and it looked as though it was on the verge of collapse. There was nothing left within the boundaries but ash; this was not her home anymore. Her family didn’t have a home: and hadn’t for some time. None of the places the Quagmires had lived in for the past year and a half had been home. None of their guardians had lasted for more than a few weeks, and the orphan shack at Prufock had certainly not been home. The self sustaining mobile air home had been safe for a while, but it had never been more than a sanctuary, not the sort of place they would have stayed if not for the danger to their lives.

Isadora sighed and stood, and considered the future: the easiest thing to do would be to go to the bank and inform them that they were still alive, they would be assigned new guardians, and they wouldn’t have to worry about food or shelter anymore. It was the easiest option, but not a good one. She and Duncan had gone through several guardians before arriving at Prufock, and they had been, without exception, cruel or stupid or naive. Isadora did not want to end up back in Count Olaf’s clutches, so she ignored that option, and continued thinking. They could find jobs, the three of them, rent a small flat, and just attempt to survive until they were of age. Then they could withdraw their fortune and vanish to some faraway place, out of Olaf’s reach. This was a better option, but not a good one, the only jobs available to 15 year olds would be menial, and unfulfilling. Isadora wracked her brains for any other plans, and became so engrossed in her thoughts that she started in shock when Duncan put the newspaper up to her face: she hadn’t even noticed him leaving the room.

“BAUDELAIRES’ NEW HOME BURNS DOWN, CHILDREN SENT TO LIVE IN WINNIPEG” read the headline. It took a moment to sink in, but when it did, she laughed out loud. Their friends were alive! Isadora had feared the worst, they had learnt shortly after returning to the city that the Baudelaires had vanished in the aftermath of the Hotel Denouement fire. 

A moment later, Isadora’s brain processed the second part of the headline, Winnipeg meant Jacquelyn, and while the Quagmires were naturally leery of the VFD, Jacquelyn had attempted to rescue them before, and Isadora knew that the Baudelaires would be safe with her. The news also gave them a third option, to reunite with their friends at last. She broached the idea, and the decision was unanimous, the Quagmires were going north.

No journey of several hundred miles is a trivial one, especially when you have no money, and no resources, but the Quagmires managed it. Although they faced hunger, cold, and an extremely depressed alligator, they completed the journey in just under a month, and suffered no serious injuries or setbacks. Upon arriving in the city, it took less than an hour to track down Jacquelyn, for she had been made Duchess, and lived in a grand house on the hill.

It was an interesting building, though Isadora. It was a surprisingly new, and constructed entirely of a strange grey stone. There were many windows, and the balconies seemed to be designed to make it almost impossible to fall off. There was a long, winding path leading up to the door. Isadora led her siblings up the path, and rang the doorbell. They were greeted by the Baudelaires, plus a baby whom Violet was holding. Klaus, who had his arms free, threw his arms around each of them, and invited them in.

Many hours later, Isadora sat on a plush sofa, surrounded by her friends and family, and smiled. They had spent the last few hours catching each other up on their stories, and the conversation did not look like it would stop anytime soon. The Baudelaires had taken Sunny and Beatrice up to bed, for it was fairly late at night, and the five remaining children conversed happily, all their past troubles forgotten for now. Isadora looked around and knew, no matter where she was, that as long as they were together, she was home.


	3. Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With danger behind them at last, Duncan tries to help his brother with a less life threatening problem.

Duncan was observant. It was an important quality to have in a journalist. As a child, he’d always been the first to notice when a room had been reorganised, or someone had changed their hair. Many of the things he noticed were unimportant, inconsequential, but he noticed them all the same. The things Duncan noticed now were definitely not unimportant. He noticed how Quigley seemed reluctant to acquire more possessions than would fit in his suitcase, like how he was expecting to have to flee at any moment, regardless of the fact that they had not been under threat for over a year. He noticed how Isadora could no longer stand the dark: the lamp by the side of her bed was lit through the night. Duncan had instinctively turned it off one evening, but she had slammed her hand into the switch to turn it back on. It had only been dark for a moment, but Duncan could see that his sister was on the edge of panic. He was careful not to turn the light out again.

It was around a week after their arrival in Winnipeg that Duncan noticed that Quigley was avoiding the Baudelaires. At first he was not worried, he had tried to keep Quigley close when they had first been reunited, but he had soon noticed that Quigley was feeling stifled. It was natural, Duncan supposed, that after so long, his brother had gotten used to being solitary, and so he had given him space. After a few days of spending most of his time in one of the outer baskets, Quigley had rejoined his family, and if he was a little distant, perhaps that was normal. Perhaps they had simply grown apart.

But soon a week turned into two, and two weeks became three, and Duncan realised that something was truly wrong. He had discovered, in the intervening weeks, that Quigley was not in fact avoiding the Baudelaires, he was avoiding Violet. The Baudelaires were so rarely apart these days that the two motivations had more or less the same effect, but the difference was noticeable. Quigley, it seemed, was perfectly happy to relax in the library with Klaus, or to spend time in the kitchen with Sunny. He even found time to look after Bea. But whenever Violet was around, he always seemed to find a reason to leave.

This behaviour baffled Duncan, it wasn’t as though Quigley disliked Violet. To the contrary, while on the mobile air home he had brought her up so often in conversation that it was clear to Duncan that something had happened between the two of them, even if he had never seen them together. But now they had been reunited at last, and they did not ever seem to share a room when not forced to, lately this had only been meals. When the two of them were together, however, Duncan noticed both of them stealing longing glances at each other, only to look away when the other turned.The situation was immensely frustrating to Duncan. Clearly his brother liked Violet, and it seemed that she liked him back. The problem, however, was that neither of them seemed willing to make the first move. Quigley seemed to be afraid of something, and, for all his projected confidence, Quigley often tended to ignore problems in the hope that they went away. Violet, on the other hand, had noticed Quigley avoiding her, and though it hurt her, had clearly decided to leave him alone.

An unfortunate side effect of Duncan’s observational skills was that, although he could often see the problem, the solution was not always as obvious. In this case, he was sure that he had to intervene, for clearly this was not something his brother would solve on his own. The problem was that Duncan could see no way in which he could help, short of locking the two of them in a room until they had a frank conversation with each other. Duncan briefly considered this, and then discarded the idea: he would not appreciate being locked in, and Quigley certainly wouldn’t.

It is often the case that a problem has a simple solution, the sort of answer that has you kicking yourself when you finally realise it. It is unfortunately also true that single mindedly attacking a problem can lead to overlooking the simple solution, so it wasn’t until he had a conversation with Isadora about Quigley that Duncan realised the answer. He didn’t have to get Quigley in a room with Violet, he just had to get him alone and speak to him himself. If he forced Quigley to face up to his feelings, he wouldn’t be able to ignore them any longer. Duncan smiled to himself, and went to find his brother.


End file.
